NASASpaceFlight.com Forum

Apollo buffs are reminded that today marks the 50th anniversary of Apollo 4, the first Saturn V flight, and made famous for the "All-Up" testing concept. I can't imagine the tension level at this liftoff, especially since the F-1s had not been flight tested. The EM1 launch will have its own measure of tension, but the SLS engines do have some service history (SRBs indirectly).

Our local paper (Pittsburgh Press) ran a 14-page Sunday advertising supplement on Apollo 4 a week prior. It was beautifully illustrated and a nice primer for the general public on rocket science. So why did North American Aviation run an aerospace ad in a steel town will almost no connection to the space program? At the time we were the headquarters of Rockwell Standard which went on to merge with North American to form North American Rockwell. I'd be curious if this ad also ran in the aerospace towns.

SA-501/AS-501 was an amazing achievement, fraught with risk. Not only did it launch successfully, it also performed the entire multi-orbit mission successfully, including S-IVB restart, etc. I suspect few expected such full inaugural success at the time.

I see Falcon Heavy Demo as its own version of Apollo 4 cross-your-fingers dicyness upcoming, though much different than the first Saturn V launch since the hardware has all flown before - just never in this configuration. Same launch pad though!

Forgot to mention the Mother of All First-Launch/All-Up nail-biters: STS-1, which had people on board!Regarding Falcon Heavy, someone posted earlier that we hope the rocket gets well clear of Pad 39 before anything bad happens (per the modest expectations Elon set for this launch).

Is it so different? The plan is to send a crew around the moon on the second SLS, in an Orion that will have flown fewer times than Apollo had by the time it carried a crew. And NASA argued in February that it could reasonably put a crew on the very first SLS mission, it would just cost more.

Does anyone here have a photo of the Apollo 4 spacecraft on display in the VAB in the 1971 timeframe. I was at KSC for the launch of Apollo 15 and remember seeing the Apollo 4 spacecraft on display during the KSC tour.Thank you!